words of a (deceived) heart
by sunny-umbrella
Summary: He can feel his wings agitate with his turmoil of emotions, but he can't stop them from shaking, can't stop the curl of fear in the pit of his stomach, can't look away from the boy he loves. The boy he loves, holding a wickedly sharp knife to his own throat.
1. falling

Kageyama sees the knife, and freezes.

"Alright, _king_, nice and easy." The person is too calm for someone threatening another, his eyes veiled with...contempt? Derision?

He can feel his wings agitate with his turmoil of emotions, but he can't stop them from shaking, can't stop the curl of fear in the pit of his stomach, can't look away from the boy he loves.

The boy he loves, holding a wickedly sharp knife to his own throat.

An unnatural laugh bursts out from Hinata—_not Hinata, Hinata doesn't sound like that_—and the former decoy changes the grip on the weapon, leveling it at Kageyama instead. A sneer, completely unsuited to the face he knows so well, curls itself into being.

"Ah, so different than what you expected, hmm?" The not-Hinata takes a step forward, still pointing the knife forward. "When your darling little crow asked you to come over, you weren't expecting _me_, were you?" He stops within inches of the boy, still silent, still shaking. "Right, Tobio-chan?"

He feels a prick of the knife at his throat, and he hastily steps back, never moving his eyes from the face he knows so well. "You—"

"Ah, yes. _Me_." The boy presses forward, and Kageyama's forced to keep retreating. "Long time no see, little king. I have to say, when you asked me how to fly, I never expected you to try to _overthrow _me!" The last few words are snarled, and he can see a glimpse of the demon that has taken over Hinata's body. It disappears just as quickly, and the boy takes a small breath in a body that's not his.

"I didn't try to overthrow you, Oikawa." Even his own voice is trembling. "I told you, all I wanted to do was fly—"

"Lies. They roll off the tongue so easily, don't they?" Not-Hinata grins, a feral one that stretches across his face. _Hinata wouldn't smile like that, his smile's different from that_. "I wonder which truths you kept hidden from this crow. You like him, don't you? Wanted him not to know this side of you?"

They keep on backing up steadily, until Kageyama can feel the breeze across his back, and chances a quick peek over his shoulder. There's a cliff there, where he learned how to use his wings, with Oikawa. Kageyama's not sure why the upperclassman suddenly grew so bitter towards him, and why this is even happening right now; there is a cliff, though, and the edge is getting closer and closer.

But he has wings; why should Oikawa think that this'll be a problem?

"Ah, so you've noticed." Oikawa stretches his smirk across Hinata's face, and it looks so wrong that Kageyama can't breathe. "See, I was originally going to kill you _with _the knife, or something along those lines, but I think that this will be more...personal, I suppose." He motions the knife, and Kageyama has no choice but to step closer to the edge.

"This isn't you, Oikawa." He croaks out the words, searching the face before him for any sign of emotion. "The Oikawa I knew wouldn't be like this."

"Ah, Tobio-chan." The boy sighs out the words, lifting the knife up, as if ready to duel. "How foolishly sentimental you are. I thought you were a smart little kohai—how mistaken I was."

Not-Hinata straightens up, and gives a leisurely stretch. "Well, we've talked long enough; let's get down to the business at hand. Shall I start?" His smirk has morphed into something more feral, and Kageyama is _afraid_, every instinct is screaming at him to _run away_—

—But then Hinata'll be left alone, he promised, _they _promised to be together—

—as not-Hinata wraps his arms around him, brings the knife up to rest at the wing joint, cool steel against feather.

"Goodbye, _king_."

And all Kageyama can feel is a blinding white, can see is a crippling pain; he dimly hears a _thump _of something, and a high keening sound—him?—he staggers back, and (this is why Oikawa wanted the cliff, he thinks dimly) feels air, insubstantial air under his feet—

—a hand grabs his, and he's left hanging precariously, one weak grip the only boundary from his doomed fall to the forest far, far below—

_"Kageyama!" _He dimly registers someone screaming his name, but his back is rippling with pain, and the weak grip that whoever has on his hand is loosening—

—he lets it weaken, slip away—

—and the wind's all around him, fleeing past him and watching him fall—

—the _king _fall—

—and as he's closing his eyes, he can see a spot of orange getting bigger in the field of his fading vision—

—arms, hands reaching out—

—blackness.


	2. dream awhile longer

**back after a super-unplanned-long-absence, it's the fic writer! with another [angsty] chapter!**

**. . .**

_—a memory._

_"You wanna join us? Why?" The shorter one barks out, and Kageyama looks down at the ground._

_"Don't like the old hag I'm stuck with. Too bossy. It's too cold here."_

_"Well, well, quite the rebel then. What's your name, little rebel-chan?" A mocking tone, mirrored by brown eyes that are too dark to be kind._

_"...Kageyama Tobio."_

_"Eh? Tobio-chan? That's a very cute name for a very ugly boy!"_

_"Oikawa, you dumbass. Stop being such a jerk to the kid." The first one says._

_"Oh, fine, but only for Iwa-chan." A sly smile. "Don't worry, Tobio-chan, you aren't terribly unattractive. Only slightly worse than Iwa-chan."_

_He scowls. "I've got my wings, at least. I can hunt, and I can make traps."_

_The older boy leans forward, and Kageyama is reminded of the deceptive strength of the game he catches in traps, soft and amiable on the outside, viciously unmerciful when caged._

_"Well, then..."_

. . .

"...geyama!" He's stirred out of his dreams by a whispered shout.

"Hey! He moved, he's awake!" His back is aching, where his wings joint into his body.

"He's awake, everyone get out!" Although it seems like they're bonier than usual, because the ground seems so bumpy and strange—

"But his wings—" Maybe foreign would describe the sensation better, or painful—

"I'll take care of it." He hazily identifies the voice as Sugawara's, the firm no-nonsense tone he uses with unruly patients. "Now, everyone out! Or I'll have to take precautionary measures."

There's a hasty tumbling of noises, and something is shut—the door?—with a rattle. Sugawara sighs.

"Kageyama?" His voice is gentler, a bit more subdued. "Can you hear me?"

He can. With great effort, he manages to pry his eyes open, and immediately wishes he hadn't, painfully blinking the crust of sleep away.

Sugawara's kneeling over him—he's on the floor, a mat?—watching him warily. It's a darkened room, and bunches of dried and drying herbs are tied throughout it. _It's definitely not the cliff_, he thinks, a sigh of relief gusts out of his body.

There's a twinge of pain—again, right in the joints of his wings—and he winces.

"Kozume-san was kind enough to lend his storageroom to us," Suga starts hesitantly. Kageyama searches his memory—although—parts seem missing?—finally recalls Kenma-the-herb-trader, based in Nekoma-the-forest-city, and then? "Just til you got well enough to travel."

He remembers words that someone let out before scurrying out of the room. "My..." He feels his voice seize up, and he collapses into a fit of weak coughs, each one washing through his limbs with white-pain.

A cool set of hands eases him up, and a glass of—water, clear and—placed at his lips. The first couple sips get coughed out, until his body catches up, and he's able to down the rest of it.

"You're probably still recovering," Sugawara says. "Rest while you can." and Kageyama feels like using his newly-whetted throat to ask him about his wings, why they hurt, what about his wings did the one person mean to say—?

Just as gently, cool hands push him down, back onto the floor, and he feels fatigue drape over him almost immediately.

He sleeps, then. He dreams.

. . .

_—another one._

_"When can you master this weapon by? We're lacking long-distance." Iwazumi (not Iwa-chan, he says menacingly, only stupid Oikawa calls me that) tosses him something, and Kageyama is (only thirteen and he should listen to his elders, teases Oikawa) falling in love with the smooth wood and sleek curves, the string not yet strung across to the other side._

_"A fortnight. Two weeks," he says, and Iwazumi grunts and he's off to go find Oikawa to teach him how to use this bow._

_(Later, he hears Oikawa whisper to Iwazumi, he's a natural no-one-is-this-good, and Iwazumi says, good thing I made you take him on, and Oikawa again, he's a prodigy, and he's using that bow as good as the king we saw once, in the royal hunt, remember that Iwa-chan?)_

_A king, he thinks to himself (as he preens his wings before bed that night), someone like him as good as a king, and it's like drinking hot soup on a winter night, because Oikawa says he's as good as a king and whatever Oikawa says about Kageyama, casual or not, is something he's determined to remember._

_King Kageyama, he whispers to himself, and gets a shiver in return. As if something is warning against the name._

. . .

This time, he opens his eyes to no one, just the bunches of herbs and a lingering ache in his wings. He's lying on his back and it's too bumpy and hard.

He eases his way up slowly, mindful of the pain in his back, and absentmindedly spreads his wings to stretch them out.

Except he can't a sharp pain lances through his wing joints up his shoulders he's seeing white and dark and—

—and orange hair feral grin flash and spiral pain down into—

"—out of it! Kageyama!" Sugawara's there and hands are squeezing his shoulders— "You need to stay with me, Kageyama, don't black out, keep breathing."

He's not blacking out, his vision is sparking with a hundred spots of no color at all, and he's crying, he thinks, he's not sure if it's just another wave of agony it's trying to claw out his eyes, it hurts it hurts it hurts

A hand is cradling his head, he chokes out a sound, he's not sure what kind it is but does it matter it doesn't it matter it does it doesn't his wings doesn't don't aren't—

—they're not _there_—

"Sorry, Kageyama, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," Sugawara whispers into his ear, it's his hand and he's guiding Kageyama to lean on him and all Kageyama can do is cry into the offered shoulder, his own hunched up against the unfairness of it all, his hands useless in his lap—

—his wings, _gone_—

—the nightmare he can't wake up from.

**. . .**

**so yea..totally didn't expect to be on this long of an unannounced hiatus, but school + writer's block = not much writing, surprisingly. -.-**

**because of said school and etc. this fic probably will be updated sporadically, so please go and read as many other fics as you wish!**

**and hopefully Hinata'll show up in the next chapter ahaa sorry about that**


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